Category Archives: Idolmaster

The IDOLM@STER 15th Anniversary Update: Happy IM@S Life

This video is pretty strong, so watch only if you are not a faithful hardcore fan I guess lol. I mean, you would know what it already is if you were.

As usual, just going to collect some thoughts here. Might not have an overarching point in this post.

The 15th Anniversary celebration for IDOLM@STER series happened this past weekend with basically two really long live streams. It started actually the days leading up with some promo art on Twitter, but more importantly there is a website refresh (the new domain is now and the launch of a dedicated IDOLM@STER channel on YouTube (and another twitter account, @imas_ch). The new site is much more modern (more circa 2016 I guess, instead of the peak 2000s machine with a blog on the side) and has actual reference data built in, mostly in this idol list subsite. The main things we used the old site for: event subsites and scheduler, are now prominently displayed on the header and the schedule is easier to read with a franchise filter. And the news pages are also filterable. Anyways, poke around there and see how much better it is than the old home page.

Now it just needs the data from these sites: imas-db (for seiyuu data and setlists), CGSS Games DB, MLTD Games DB, and Project-imas (for translated content, song content)

Thanks Covid

The anniversary streams are really not a big deal–they streamed animas, moviemas, MOIW2014 second day on Saturday. On Sunday it was MOIW2015 both days, SideM 1st and Shiny 1st. To cap off the weekend there was also a 2-hour live stream (actually live) of the performers giving us the full wax-nostalgia of the last 15 years in IM@S world. We got 4 big-ish news item out of it, so there was still that. Surprisingly, there was no new news on Starlit Season.

The big news, aside from 1 free ten-pull in every IM@S game today onward, is that there will be a CGSS x MLTD collaboration this winter. Considering the commonly accepted start of winter of 2020 is December 21, we have a long, long ways to go for something that hype. Two “longs” because, well, 2020 is that kind of a year.

And 2020 is that kind of year, where in lieu of a guaranteed, tear-jerking Shiny Colors 2nd live (featuring Noctchill 1st and in some ways, also Straylight 1st); Million Live 7th live (featuring actual fireworks, and an anime announcement); and the first big solo 765AS live since January 2018 (to go with the new console game), we got like…32 hours of live streaming over a 40 hour period or so? It was a 4-day weekend in Japan so I guess it worked.

But yes, these substitutions for our unbearable outpouring of love and nostalgia is easier to kindle than ever. The tearjerker music video is good, even, and I suspect the desired effects could have been had for less.

And let’s be clear–the streaming stuff and the news are just the carrot on the stick. The real value is the donkey walking forward. You know, it really is the case where fans pull the series forward. It’s not just a commercial activity, but that Bannam hears us and what we want. Once the bargain between the seller and buyer, consumer and provider, patreon and artist, whatever, is set, it is a virtuous cycle of capitalism where we throw money at them and they provide us with goods and services. Both of us go home happy. That does not, however, speak to the competence. Yes, the tearjerker music video is good. The new 15th Anniversary song is pretty good. But so what? IDOLM@STER, as my hindsight have it, is successful despite of its numerous failures. It isn’t because mistakes weren’t made, but because what came through, what people focused on, what worked, the overall sum of that is greater than all the limitations and suffering people had to put up with. It is a bit of a heartless calculus for something arguably by definition fun and fluffy. And it is with this lens I see IDOLM@STER in 2020.

That is also just to say, the fandom on fire is way more rewarding than anything that came out of GamiP’s mouth last night on the anniversary livestream. Seeing my twitter TL full of outpouring for IDOLM@STER is therapeutic and moving. People recalled the better times with animas and moviemas. People saw for the first time how these cast members were 5-6 years back, or even for the first time. People told the stories of great memories lived as Producers. It needed to happen–just once a year or something is okay, but it needed to happen on the regular.

Maybe the Corona Era enhanced this kind of thing more, maybe not. But it is what makes fandom worthwhile.

My Shinography

My sleep-addled brain cried buckets of figurative tears last weekend listening to Sato Takafumi’s DJ set during the online EDM music event Asobinotes. Why? [Hit play below to hear the relevant part. Full set here]

That question “why” is literally the description of words on the canvas of the deep blue sky described in the song Shinography. It is the reason why I do the things I do. I quote the lyrics from the Shiny Colors 3rd year theme (TL):

まだ上昇中の Gradation days
誰のでもない　瞬間を
光空記録(My shinography)

The IDOLM@STER is a series that lives and dies in the hands of a, to put it nicely, turbulent company during a time when the future is uncertain. I’ve made the analogy of that tree in the past as a personal metaphor, but it’s a metaphor that is shared between not just other fans, but the series itself as well as its creators.

Million Live’s theme songs since the start had been as follows: Thank You, Welcome, Dreaming, Brand New Theater, Union, Flyers, and Glow Map. Do you see where we are going? We will go into the space over the future. We’re looking for the place under the shining star. And I guess Jam Project is also Lantis, right. Shiny starts at the glowing part already. To paint the visual metaphor of the tree, the OG is the seed, CG and ML are the trunk and branches, and Shiny is some fruit. Maybe also, CG is also all of these.

But this “growing” vibe, this repeating theme from OG, CG, ML and Shiny literally is the type of music fans consumed and loved year to year. It describes the attitude of the content, the attitude of the producers–those who know where they are but they dream big. Shiny Colors especially is that daring fruit hanging from the IM@S tree, bucking core trends and practices for popular mobile games and franchises, eschewing easy and quick play for deep characterization and VN-style rewards.

The lead in to Sato’s set, going back to what I was saying, is the summary of where he is. Sato happens to be the music director for the IDOLM@STER series, so he has a hand in all of this after taking over the role from his seniors. It seems almost like biographic when RE@DY was the start for this portion.

In a lot of ways when you are creating media works for a series like this, you are creating some kind of future that you are building towards, and it’s always somewhat risky how things will play out or not. Granted the risk is pretty low sometimes, but with these big franchises the room for mistake is pretty small, or so it can seem.

This is Manabi-ism. We exist as fans inside the space the work’s creators made, but the difference isn’t building a world, but building a the mechanism that moves the world forward. The difference is similar to having a lot of money versus a machine that makes money. In the year of our Lord 2020, only the latter exists, and it is one derivative higher, more difficult, more uncertain.

It’s about our perception of where this world will go. It is about the perception of the creators, and the fans’, the cast, the execs, the committees, and everyone pushing forward our next software update, our next gacha banner, our next new song. This is the idol festival that never ends, and is never exactly the same year to year.

Because if it was, it probably will end soon.

Now imagine that, all the ideas and emotions I tried to describe, play through in your mind in the span of about 138 seconds, and then add the pandemic-induced issue about having missed ML7th and Shiny 2nd, where for one weekend each you can actually touch, smell, feel and see this world materialize in the physical festivals that marks the typical IM@S anniversary lives.

Buckets of tears. My life is carved into the lights of the sea and sky beyond your water bottle. Want a sip?

CG7th Osaka Rocks

Rather than recap I just want jot down all the thoughts and feels from the live. This bid to try to get this post out ASAP didn’t really work, but I fear it would have been only worse otherwise. But first, the setlist can be had here:

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IDOLM@STER Concepts: Tantou vs. Favorite












Million Live 6th SSA

The final stop of the 6th Live Tour for THE IDOLM@STER MILLION LIVE was in good ol’ Saitama Super Arena, in September. Unlike Million 3rd, this whole tour dragged on from April into late September. It crossed from Spring to Summer and ended on the second day of Autumn. That is a really long stretch.

I was only able to go to the Fukuoka stop in June prior to SSA. But that made a big difference. I guess it’s fair to assume even if people did not go to all the stops, many have live viewed at least some of them, if not all. It’s a big commitment to go to SSA for the live, in terms both of obtaining the tickets through one of the lotteries or by other means, and the effort of doing so. Producers across the country attended the biggest stop of them all, even if many traveled less as I did. It is still quite the effort to travel from the edges of Japan. I remember seeing tweets of the guy from Okinawa, trying to bribe tickets with local delicacies.

My crusty, jaded mentality aside, I thought 6th SSA was a lot of fun. Like what I tweeted for day 2, it left me with this sweet aftertaste as Tokugawa Matsuri in the form of Suwa Ayaka came up from the elevated stage and ended this illumination festival.

Day one and day two both followed the format where each subunit came out and do a part of their Angel/Princess/Fairy stop sets, with the collab/guest songs thrown in there and mixed with covers. During the 3 non-Kanto stops, each unit had more time to themselves, and the last 1/3 of the live each day was dedicated to covers and solos. So for SSA, they cut basically almost all the solos. For new content, we got the TB songs and some new covers.

Overall I thought this was fine, purely in terms of going to a live and looking for the songs we like. But this format does not flow very well, since we know what is coming, and the units have to do their key songs. Like, you knew EScape had to do LOST because of the way the song fits their group concept. Or that baller mix of Art Needs Heart Beats has to go with Jelly Pop Beans. It was more a toss up for, say, Charlotte Charlotte and D/Zeal and their covers (which both were new for SSA). But it also felt like day one’s groups were kind of a bore as a result.

In some sense, the overall limp malaise-y feel I get from SSA has to do with the way the approached the tour. It felt less like a live tour, and more like just 4 different shows, for some reason, that had to take place inorganically and in far reaches of Japan, so they had to get the tokyoites to move out by holding back the 4th one until the end. During 3rd it was almost the opposite–you didn’t get to go to the remote one because it was hard to get in those smaller venues; the small venues also made the lives a bit more intimate and different than the big shows Millions do. Tokyo types who want to camp out for the Makuhari stop are free to do so, that one felt fine because you knew it was its own thing, and not a summary like 6th SSA. Maybe that’s why it took me months to finish this recap, lol.

In terms of practical things on the ground, I was able to squeeze in a Kayafesh event on Saturday. That’s basically a really bad costpa sake festival with seiyuu content. I liked it because I can be a lush at times and it’s my first sake fest in Japan. Plus, you can’t go wrong drinking with seiyuu. I also stayed one extra day to enjoy Takagi Miyu’s birthday event, as things turned out to be. It was nice to stay that extra day and hang out with some local friends. Rest of the time, it was business as usual.

As of the latest update, the splash screen for Theater Days changed over to a new quintet, so maybe this post is apropos. For this flower project, we utilized the same shop we did for 5th’s flower stand, and it was a bit more on the cuff with Miri helping out big time. Funding-wise, we basically broke even like last time, but we needed a bit more of a push since the suggested donation is lower this time around, and everything cost more. No pin badges… Again, I cannot thank y’all enough.

It’s a weird feeling, thinking about the live again. In a way the hype was way less than 5th, but the live itself was way better than 5th. I liked how the tap dancers, at least, came back for a nice encore performance from Sendai. It does make me want to look forward to both that and the SSA version, which is a slightly bigger presentation. There are other touches that was nice for 6th. The streams of small videos promoting the live, the goods, and now the blurays, is appreciated but not too sure if it added much. Well, they did a good job promoting that costume book at least?

I mean, they could just say it smells good and I’m sure it will sell oodles.

Set list here: day 1 and day 2.

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